Our friend Max Rippon (aka RIPO) is currently showing these wonderful wood and canvas works focused on his love of type through the lens of the fundamental transience of modern life that we're all setting goals for upgrades (PHOTOS).

"The basic fact of modern life... 'All that is solid melts into air.'" - Marshall Berman

We cannot stop. We must move forward. Growth. Expansion. Progress. Evolution. We don't yearn for less friends, a smaller house, a smaller bank account, less notoriety. The goals we set are for streamlining our upgrades, building on and in turn making obsolete what it was we craved and loved only yesterday.

Anyway You Cut It -
The roofs, walls, and floors of this abandoned factory continue to collapse in on
themselves as their support system gets cut away for scrap metal. -
I made my own cuts to add rather than take away from this forgotten place. -
Montgat, Spain

The subtle word play between the written letters and the cut letters on which they sit is complex and inviting, and the wastebasket with paper shreds was a great touch. This room was a nice little sanctuary during the chaos of the opening and would probably be an even better experience any time between now and when the show closes on April 6th.

As we approach the Holidays (are we there now?), we thought we'd check in with some of the artists currently showing in our Winter Group Show at FFDG on display through Jan 12th.

We've been posting up Barcelona based Max Rippon's (RIPO) work for years now (since 2009?). He does a lot of it outdoors and some of it indoors like he did with his recent show at White Walls (pics).

For some press release terminology:
Heavily influenced by sign painting, Ripo creates text-based work with an urban aesthetic, exploring single words and short turns of phrase with a tongue-in-cheek sensibility. Elaborately-drawn fonts, formed with watercolor, ink, graphite, sign painters enamel and oil pastels on delicate handcut paper, allow us to appreciate the aesthetics of the words regardless of their associations.... Here is a short interview with the prolific fella covering all the bases.

My friends, my brother, the Internet, and letters, signs, and sights I come
across in the streets. Coming across unintentionally hysterical signage is the
best.

Favorite place traveled?

Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Working routine? Music? Time of day?

It can range from midday to midnight. An "average" day (I actually don't have
these too often) I wake up mid-morning and do a bit of work in the studio or on
the computer before running errands. If I get out of the house too late I won't
be able to do anything since most places close in Spain during lunchtime.
It's one of the most inconvenient things about living here. Then later in the
afternoon I'll get down to business in the studio until someone distracts me
and drags me out at night.

RIPO emailed over some pics from a recent wall he painted in Tudela de Navarra, Spain. It reads Surreal But So Real and was painted as part of the Avant-Garde Urbano Festival, curated by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada. Other artists in the festival were Escif, C215, and JCHM IX.

I got to work not long after that and decided on a straight forward message to announce my arrival: Arrivee (translation: (I have) Arrived). This piece is also painted next to the front door of a housing project in Vitry, so a fitting word to see when you're stumbling home.

I first arrived to Vitry-Sur-Seine, a suburb slightly outside of Paris. I stayed a few days there with my friend C215 and he took me around to see some of the walls that have been getting painted around town as more and more artists are coming through there. Here are a few pieces spotted from C215, Shida, and Roa, as well as some nice old signage.

The second wall reads Davantage qu'il ne semble (translation: More than it seems). Our eyes complete the letters even though they run off the wall and onto the metal slatted door on the right.

Barcelona based RIPO, who does great mural works, releases this new (38"x28") giclee photo print Casa Nova which features a mural RIPO painted in a torn out house on the outskirts of of Barcelona in the winter of 2009.

Fecal Pal and NYC based RIPO emailed over some photos from his current show featuring calligraphy, fantastic typography, phonetics and political discourse running through Feb 14th in Barcelona... You may be familiar with RIPO's outside work.

Muralist, RIPO emailed over a couple newer mural works. Love his lettering and these pieces.

Your Name Super Size - Near Basel, Switzerland

Madrid, Spain - An old tobacco factory in Madrid seemed like the perfect place to paint a tribute to the classic Optimo Cigars sign that I grew up seeing all over NYC. And even for those people who won't know the context it's at least an Optimistic word. - RIPO

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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